The Suffering. The Succotash.
I’ve noticed a villainous tendency toward unblended scotch in popular fiction: those plotting to overthrow the government from within drink the good stuff while those in the field are likely to use single malt as the primary fuel in a boilermaker. PIs don’t drink anymore so it’s up to the amateur sleuths to knock back a few after discovering a corpse in the kitty litter. ( Not again, Henry. Another dead guy.) This brings me to scenes we don’t see enough of.
A really loaded English Professor at a small but prestigious school discovers the body of his Dean riddled with bullets but he’s got Dusty Springfield on his I-pod and a bottle of single malt which he swigs and chugs while debating what to do. He passes out and the cops arrive and charge him with murder. His fingerprints are all over the tommy gun and Lord Have Mercy it wasn’t his scotch.
His attorney wanted to be a rock musician but took the bar under an assumed name, Al Capone. His band, the Capones, are embroiled in an IRS investigation while his ex-wife plots to have him killed if she can just figure his real name. She’s killed a bunch of guys named Dean in a kind of round robin elimination approach that’s drawn the attention of a fat guy in a pork pie hat. He’s trying to figure this dame out; yeah, she’s dangerous but he’s had a few boilermakers and needs studded tires for the winter.
A brilliant but troubled prosecutor is assigned the case. For the defense we have a rookie who turns to the fat guy for advice while the cops frame the professor for blowing away the dean. The judge has a five dollar bill on his forehead and a note from his doctor that says “bribe me.”
Another murder, this one during a Capones Concert, seems to exonerate the Professor but the ex-wife made his bail and the fat guy saw him buying a tommy gun from Tommy’s Haus of Guns along with forty boxes of ammo and a crate of single malt scotch. It looks bad for the Professor but a deus ex machina arrives in the form of the Goddess Athena who intervenes at the last minute. She smacks down the troubled prosecutor, gives the fat guy abs of steel and brings the dean back to life. Case closed. Time for a drink.
March 17th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Athena? Now your talking. Think how satisfying these endings could be. One god or goddess could strike the protagonist (or shoever was convenient) dead, and another one could retaliate by making the dead one immortal as a constellation in the night sky.
Alternatively, the god or goddess could turn the protag into a locust. Think of the follow-up possibilities. Nobody’s done that yet, have they–a PI who happens to be a locust?
Those Greeks were onto something with that whole deus ex thing.
March 17th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I’d like to see the Greek Chorus make a comeback. “She’s guilty, he’s lying, he’s Al Capone.”
March 18th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
The musical version of “Little Shop of Horrors” has a Greek Chorus wandering through. Though it’s sort of a Motown Girl Group Greek Chorus.
March 18th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Motown works. “It is in his eyes? Oh no, that’s not the way. He’s guilty, guilty, guilty…hey, hey, hey.”
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:55 am
Yes, you’d need a stiff drink after a story stuffed with stiffs. Riveting tale until the Deus Ex Machina denouement. To be honest, we could do with a visit from the goddess Athena round here. Abs of steel you say?